Jacques Chirac will vote for Socialist presidential candidate in elections on
Sunday rather than his fellow conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, a close friend
has confirmed.

The support will be unwelcome news for Mr Sarkozy, tipped to lose heavily to Mr Hollande in a second round run-off, as his predecessor in the Elysée Palace is now polled as one of France’s best-loved political figures, despite a corruption conviction.

Mr Chirac’s penchant for the Left-winger has reportedly risked causing marital tensions as his wife, Bernadette, has been actively campaigning for Mr Sarkozy, even speaking in campaign rallies.

When the 79-year old former president first publicly suggested he would back Mr Hollande last June, he and his family subsequently sought to laugh it off as a joke. Mr Chirac is now rarely seen in public as he suffers from Alzheimers disease.

But on Tuesday, French historian Jean-Luc Barre, who helped Mr Chirac write his memoirs, told Le Parisien newspaper the Gaullist was deadly serious in backing Mr Hollande, who, like him, has built his rural power base in the south-central Corrèze region.

“Jacques Chirac is true to himself when he says he will vote for Francois Hollande,” Mr Barre said. “I visit him frequently, we have lunch and dinner together. After four years of discussions I believe I’m one of those who knows best how he thinks,” he went on.

According to Le Parisien, barring his wife Bernadette, the entire Chirac clan is now behind Mr Hollande, including Claude, his daughter and one-time communications chief. Claude is reported to have recently had lunch with Mr Hollande’s partner, Valérie Trierweiler.

Relations between Mr Chirac and Mr Sarkozy have been notoriously checkered.

After idolising the man who gave him his first political break, Mr Sarkozy held up his former mentor as his antithesis – a feckless “roi fainéant” (idle king) who “fiddles the locks of Versailles while Paris burns”. He famously betrayed Mr Chirac by resigning as his campaign manager in the 1995 presidential election and backing his rival, Edouard Balladur. At the time, he was very close with Claude Chirac, whose mother described him as the perfect son-in-law. When Mr Sarkozy dropped the Chirac clan, Bernadette is said to have cried: “And to think he saw us in our nightshirts.” Despite, that, she has become a staunch supporter during this campaign, declaring that Mr Hollande “doesn’t have the build of a French president” before backtracking slightly, saying she had been too severe.

Mr Chirac broke his silence on his one-time protégé began last year when he described him as “nervous”, “impetuous” and untrustworthy in his memoirs, saying he did not share the same “vision of France”. He meanwhile heaped praise on Mr Hollande, saying he had the stuff of a true “statesman”.

Then while on a walkabout with Mr Hollande during a tour of the museum housing his presidential gifts in Corrèze, he said: “I can say I would vote for Hollande.” Later, he said that he “deplored” people interpreting what was intended as a “Correzian joke”.

The office of the former French president said: "Nobody is entitled to express themselves in the name of Jacques Chirac, who will make no public declaration in this election."

Reacting to the news, Mr Sarkozy said he was “sad” that others were seeking to speak “in his name”.

“The best way to respect Jacques Chirac and the difficulties he has is to try not to make him speak and be manipulated one way or another by his entourage.”